This paper will briefly attempt to open up some of those awkward questions around form, audience, genre and industry, questioning what implications such a monumental groundshift in distribution might have for our students’ futures in the traditionally termed ‘film and television industries’.

Judith Aston

Senior Lecturer in Film-making and Creative Media at UWE,and a co-director of i-Docs

Teaching Filmmaking in the 21st Century – an example from UWE

We have been teaching multiplatform and interactive documentary production alongside filmmaking for nearly twenty years and are starting to think in earnest about ways in which we can integrate these approaches more firmly within filmmaking itself. In order to do this, we are encouraging students to think of their practice as being part of a wider creative endeavour called ‘immersive design’. In this talk, I will explain what we mean by this and how we have begun to apply this concept from the ground up through the re-write and delivery of a Level 1 module.

Lucy Leake

Joint Programme Leader, Film at Plymouth College of Art

Je ne suis pas Charlie

Plymouth College of Art film students are encouraged to experiment with short film ideas throughout their three years with us, in response to themes, aesthetics, technologies and film texts explored in class sessions. In response to the Charlie Hebdo attack in January this year, a group of three second year BA (Hons) Film students made a short (4:20m) film called Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie. The film plays with audience expectation, and is a remarkably powerful short.

However, it raised a number of questions around ethics;

1. Is it acceptable to show Islamic prayer ritual on screen?

2. How might this be received by a mixed audience?

3. How could students create a scene of terror in an urban street, without causing a scene of terror in an urban street?

4. The title itself is contentious, in a climate where support for Charlie Hebdo came under the banner of “Je Suis Charlie”

Interestingly the students addressed all these issues and more.

3.30pm Tea/Coffee

4pm Keynote Speaker Rod Stoneman

Director of the Huston School of Film & Digital Media. Before coming to NUI Galway, he was Chief Executive of Bord Scannán na hÉireann / the Irish Film Board and previously a Deputy Commissioning Editor in the Independent Film and Video Department at Channel 4 Television.

Towards a Different Future

In an overdue discussion the current challenges facing practice-based film training, Rod Stoneman examines the history, impact, and significance of film education. Film training has historically focused on the cultivation of the film-maker as a cultural activist, artist, or intellectual – fostering creativity and innovation. But more recently a narrower approach has emerged, placing a new emphasis on technical training for the industry. Arguing for a more imaginative engagement and understanding of the broader social importance of film and television, he proposes that critical analysis and production should be connected. There is a political and aesthetic critique of the instrumentalism of some practice-based approaches – we may examine the possibilities for different futures in the digital era.